May 2010 Archives

Competition time; celebrate 25 years of Wi-Fi

By Alex Scroxton on May 28, 2010 3:00 PM | No Comments
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This week is the 25th anniversary of a landmark decision by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to open up the radio spectrum and allow unlicensed access for communications, and to mark the occasion we've teamed up with D-Link to run a competition with a distinctly vintage air...
 
The FCC's decision lit the touchpaper for regulators in other countries to adopt similar rules and ultimately led to the development of wireless, or Wi-Fi technology as we know it today.
 
Wi-Fi has had, and continues to have an enormous impact on the lives of people around the world, and has brought the online experience to the masses, allowing flexible remote working, mobility, and in the home, a whole host of interconnected devices for music, gaming, and pretty much anything else you can think of.  "Wireless really does touch on every aspect of a person's life, in hospital, in school, in the office, on the move and at home," says Chris Davies, general manager of the UK and Ireland at D-Link.
 
And where would all those wannabe screen-writers and hipster musicians be without a trendy Wi-Fi enabled cafe to sit in and surf the Internet on their new Macbooks?
 
Chris believes going without Wi-Fi is now an "unimaginable" torment for millions. "Wi-Fi has come into its own, particularly with the rise in popularity of smartphones and mobile gaming devices and the growing number of public and private hotspots," he says.
 
"The Wi-Fi journey has been an exciting one and the future promises to be even more so, as the demand for anytime and anywhere internet access shows no sign of slowing down."
 
D-Link is one of many companies driving the wireless industry forward, and has helped take the lead in the development of the latest standard, 802.11n, ratified last year. In fact, it shipped its first Wireless N router, the DIR-635, in 2006, three years before the standard was approved.
 
As a measure of just how successful the technology is proving, consumer 802.11n access point shipments are set to hit 32.2 million this year, with enterprise access points hitting the half a million mark, according to the number-crunchers at ABI Research.
 
Wireless through the ages:
1985 - FCC releases the decision to permit unlicensed access to the radio spectrum, and the world heaves a sigh of relief.
 
1990 - A new Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is set up to look at creating a new 802.11 standard for wireless equipment.
 
1997 - The 802.11 standard for wireless Ethernet networks is introduced to critical acclaim.
 
1998 - The 802.11b standard is ratified, supporting a speedier maximum throughput of 11Mbps.
 
1999 - The term Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity) is first used commercially. It was coined by brand-consultancy Interbrand as an amusing play on the term 'Hi-Fi'. With such devastating wit they should try writing for MicroScope.
 
2003 - The 802.11g standard is adopted, raising throughput levels to 54Mbps.
 
2009 - The 802.11n standard is finally ratified, raising throughput rates again, this time to a whopping 300Mbps.
 
Win the whisky!
To celebrate this joyous occasion D-Link and MicroScope are offering one lucky reader a rare 25 year-old single malt Glenmorangie, with 24 runners up receiving a miniature of The Glenrothes 1985 vintage.
 
To be in with a chance of winning, all you have to do is answer the following question correctly.
 
What was the name of D-link's first Wireless N product?
 
a) WLTM-635
b) DIR-635
c) BMW-635
 
Please send your answer via email to microscope@rbi.co.uk. Answers will be drawn at random after the closing date, Friday 11 June 2010.
 
Competition terms and conditions
The standard competition terms and conditions apply to all competitions run on MicroScope.co.uk, unless otherwise specified for an individual competition.
Competitions are open to all UK residents aged 18 or over except for employees of Reed Business Information Limited, D-Link, and their immediate families.
Competition closing dates will apply as published alongside the details of each individual competition.
Winners will be chosen according to the criteria published alongside each competition's details.
Entries will be judged by the editor of MicroScope.co.uk and any other judges specified in the competition details.
Judges' decisions are final and no correspondence will be entered into.
Only one prize per competition per person.
Winners will be notified by email and prizes will be sent by registered delivery.
No cash alternatives are available.
Entering our competitions is free. No purchase is necessary.
By entering any competition, entrants are deemed to have accepted these terms and conditions.
MicroScope.co.uk reserves the right to cancel or amend competitions or these rules at any time without prior notice.
Entrants can contact MicroScope.co.uk at the following address:
MicroScope, Attn: Simon Quicke, 3rd Floor, Quadrant House, The Quadrant, Sutton, Surrey, SM2 5AS

Congratulations to ACEs networking nominees

By Alex Scroxton on May 26, 2010 10:08 AM | No Comments
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Tonight marks the fourth annual MicroScope Awards for Channel Excellence (ACEs) and those attending this year's event at the Lancaster London are promised a night of gourmet food, fun and frolics and top-notch comedy from our mystery guest!

Things may even get a little boozy at times.

Prior to the ceremony, I'd just like to take the opportunity to congratulate all the nominees for the Networking Distributor and Networking Vendor of the Year awards.

Azlan, Bell Micro, Comstor UK, EntaTech, Ingram Micro and Micro Peripherals will be slugging it out to be crowned Networking Distributor of the Year, while D-Link UK, Expand Networks, Extreme Networks, Griffin Internet, HP ProCurve, Juniper Networks, Ruckus Wireless and Viatel are competing to be named Networking Vendor of the Year.

And good luck as well to all the other entrants, including the many nominated resellers who sell and support networks around the UK.

If you're joining us tonight, have a great time at the ACEs, and I hope to chat with some of you there.

Prepare to redecorate; Cisco wants into your living room!

By Alex Scroxton on May 24, 2010 12:30 PM | No Comments
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Wallpaper paste at the ready. A £350 home telepresence system could be gracing your living room in the near-future if remarks made by Cisco worldwide operations veep Rob Lloyd last week are anything to go by.

Speaking at a Reuters technology shindig in California, Lloyd said the vendor was currently testing a home system that would "just plug into your television" with a view to launching soon.

This comes almost exactly a year after Lloyd's boss John Chambers said the vendor would become more aggressive in the consumer space.

However, some analysts have already declared themselves sceptics, saying that a costly home device would struggle to compete in an area dominated by cheap-'n-cheerful services such as Skype.

But Rob Lloyd pointed out that the high-tech device could solve troubling latency issues experienced on many systems, and it would certainly be a boon to long-distance learning in places such as outback Australia.

Home workers looking for a higher quality communications experience - or who just want to impress the boss - will probably also be interested.

The only small problem that I foresee is that current enterprise installations of Cisco TelePesence seem to require a rather drab beige wall covering in the background, presumably to enable the quality HD imagery to shine through.

So any home working channel execs who have particularly exuberant taste in home decor might want to get the decorators in.

Westcon Group scoops vendor awards

By Alex Scroxton on May 21, 2010 1:10 PM | No Comments
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Congratulations to convergence and networking distributor Westcon and its Cisco unit, Comstor, which have both picked up some vendor awards this week.

Westcon's Willem de Haan was on hand at the 2010 Juniper networks J-Partner Summit in Barcelona to pick up the vendor's award for EMEA Distributor of the Year for its work with the vendor in the UK, France, Italy and Benelux.

Juniper VP of EMEA channel sales David Small praised the distie's "focus and investment" noting "Westcon [grew] their business quarter-on-quarter across all product groups, general business and named account business during 2009."

Comstor, meanwhile, will be needing to invest in a new display cabinet after walking away with no fewer than seven Cisco awards*, three in Spain, two in Germany and two in the UK; Geography Winner and Distributor Partner of the Year.

Comstor Worldwide president Jon Pritchard said the awards validated the "commitment we have to our partners in the delivery of a true value add supply chain business."

* Before security stopped them at the door, that is.

No network on the high seas for Captain Bligh

By Alex Scroxton on May 20, 2010 11:24 AM | No Comments
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Bounty_BlazePoint.JPGHow the world has changed; Captain Bligh sailed a thousand miles across the South Pacific in an open boat with just a sextant, a compass and sheer dumb luck to guide him after being chucked off the Bounty.

But nowadays you wouldn't think of attempting to sail the seven seas without a battery of comms kit. Satellite phones, GPS and an Internet connection of some description have made themselves indispensable to the modern yachtsman.

Spare a thought then for Aussie adventurer Don McIntyre and a four-man crew, who are lending authenticity to their attempt to recreate Captain Bligh's famous 1789 voyage by taking, well, none of the above save an emergency rugged laptop from mobile computing specialist Blazepoint.

The 4,000-mile odyssey, which started in April on the 221st anniversary of the mutiny on the Bounty, will take the crew around Fiji - where Bligh recorded he was chased by cannibals - Vanuatu, down to Queensland in Australia, and then up the Great Barrier Reef, finishing their journey in Timor.

"The laptop is the hub of our communications and permits us to update our blog on route," said McIntyre of his sole concession to the 21st Century.

"In addition, if the chips are down and we need GPS support, we want to make damn sure that the computer on which we'll be accessing its functions operates regardless of the surrounding conditions," he said.

Besides providing a good photo op for Blazepoint, the expedition will also be raising funds for the Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience, a leading UK centre for research into motor neuron disease.

Assuming the laptop is still working at this point, the crew's progress can be followed on their website and donations can be made here.

Is Cisco's absence from UCIF really a source of concern?

By Alex Scroxton on May 19, 2010 4:00 PM | No Comments
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The new Unified Communications Interoperability Forum announced today has raised eyebrows in the industry after it emerged that Cisco had been invited to join the alliance - which seeks to foster open standards and interoperability in the complex, undefined world of unified comms - but didn't bother to RSVP.

Founder members of the alliance include networking infrastructure stalwart Juniper Networks, IT behemoth HP and plucky video vendor Polycom, which is blazing a trail as one of the few remaining independent mid-market video providers.

The total market for UC is set to expand rapidly over the next couple of years, and the absence of UC kingpin Cisco has puzzled some who say that the vendor's involvement would lend the alliance some much needed credibility amongst end-users.

However, I'm not sure that Cisco's absence is necessarily a problem, or even that extending an invitation to Cisco wasn't just a courtesy for the UCIF founders.

The vendor continues to resolutely plough its own furrow, and coming in on an alliance with HP so soon after their very public falling out might stick in the craws of some at Cisco.

This said, there's no doubt that the involvement of a name like Cisco would increase the organisation's profile and possibly tempt a few big name spenders to start considering the value of UC to their business, although to be perfectly frank more people have probably heard of HP.

And Cisco is definitely into interoperability, so even if they don't sign up right away, they'll be plugging away at their own objectives in this direction.

One thing is certain, which is this will be a massive boon to the resale and service provider channels, and give those whose job it is to sell UC technology a welcome chance to start forging new vendor relationships and upsell product from all the vendors involved.

Further details about the new forum, and a full list of its members, can be found on its website at http://www.ucif.org.

Who was Palm's mystery suitor?

By Alex Scroxton on May 17, 2010 11:00 AM | No Comments
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A bloodthirsty bidding war between five companies took place behind the scenes before Hewlett-Packard emerged victorious in the race to acquire troubled handset builder Palm, it has now emerged.

According to Palm's most recent SEC filing, detailed in greater depth by Engadget, Palm had initially chatted up 16 other companies, but eventually narrowed it down to the final five, HP and four firms identified as Companies A through D. Of these, A and B were quickly sent packing.

The mysterious Company C then proceeded to shoot itself in the foot in the final stages of negotiation after dropping its offer to $5.50 a share on 22 April and writing in some extra clauses, including a $60m termination penalty if things didn't work out, that Palm didn't like the look of.

On 24 April, CEO Jon Rubinstein went back to HP, which ponied up the extra 20 cents a share to seal the deal at $1.2bn.

Two of the bidders were almost certainly Lenovo, which publicly dropped out on 23 April (while Palm was still negotiating with Company C), and HTC, which still leaves two bidders, including Company C, to be identified.

Engadget's blogger claims that Company C never signed an NDA, so it will be interesting to see if someone close to the deal leaks its identity.

The inconvenient truth of acquisition

By Alex Scroxton on May 14, 2010 3:50 PM | No Comments
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Earlier today we heard the sad news that optical networking specialist Ciena, which now owns a substantial part of Nortel's business, is readying P45s for 17 workers at the vendor's facility in Northern Ireland.

When a company is acquired in our industry one of the things we always try and find out is how it will affect the core of the company's workforce.

A lot of the time it's good news; more often than not IT companies acquire for technological and channel expertise and any roles that are put at risk are generally in areas of duplication, like HR.

But the inconvenient truth is that sometimes, firms just have to let people go, and on this occasion, Ciena has clearly decided that their roles can be better deployed at its headquarters in the US.

We've covered the fortunes of the Nortel workers in Northern Ireland since the venerable Canadian slipped into administration in 2009. In that time the facility - once a jewel in Nortel's EMEA crown and a showcase for the boomtime Northern Irish economy - has seen repeated cuts to its workforce, first by Nortel, and later by Avaya.

In Nortel's case, the redundancies appear to have been very badly handled, drawing the ire of both trade union Unite, which represents a number of those affected, and the local SDLP MP, Alasdair McDonnell. Employees have claimed they were let go without proper consultation or appropriate compensation, and railed against Nortel for forking out hefty bonuses for senior staff.

We can only hope that Ciena treats those affected by the latest cuts as fairly as possible, and extend our sympathy.

Broadband still on government action list

By Alex Scroxton on May 14, 2010 11:06 AM | No Comments
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Despite there being no mention of the subject in the agreement thrashed out by the Lib Dems and the Conservatives this week, improving the state of Britain's broadband infrastructure his high on the agenda for the incoming coalition government, according to Ian Grant at our sister publication, ComputerWeekly.

A government spokesperson told Grant that "broadband is a high priority for the government, but we have only been here 24 hours."

Yesterday, BT ramped up its own plans for super-fast broadband after pumping an extra £1bn into the project. It claims this will extend coverage to 66% of UK homes by 2015.

The government also said that it is unlikely that the controversial Digital Economy Act, which has been welcomed by anti-piracy campaigners and software industry advocates as much as it has been condemned by the UK's ISPs, will be repealed.

Check out the full story at ComputerWeekly.com

The ghost of Cisco yet to come

By Alex Scroxton on May 13, 2010 1:00 PM | No Comments
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It's always a chore when the quarterly results season comes around, trawling through the dry earnings releases and transcribing the committee decided executive statements.

And those naughty, naughty companies that fudge their results and hide the true extent of their net profits - or losses - at the tail end of a 200 page PDF file are the bane of a good financial story.

So it was a pleasure to read Cisco's Q3 earnings statement today, with its numbers all neatly set out in journalist-friendly tables.

Thumbnail image for John Chambers sitting.jpg
And without wanting to appear too sycophantic, although I am sort of angling for an interview with the boss man (get onto that please, lads), we at MicroScope are suckers for a southern accent, and could happily listen to CEO John Chambers (pictured) talk for a long time.

So it was that I also listened to the 90 minute Cisco earnings call this week so that you didn't have to.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote that it was always the stuff that doesn't get press released that provides the best pickings, and true to form a few interesting hints of Cisco's future strategy have emerged.

Generally speaking, Cisco's Q3 was a story of growth across the board as the vendor recorded what Chambers referred to as its best quarter ever.

Regular readers of MicroScope will know that Chambers was one of the first industry heavyweights to call the bottom of the recession during 2009, and he is now convinced that we are back on the road to recovery.

So as this recovery gathers pace, what are we going to see Cisco doing?

Cisco has a long-stated commitment to its architectural technology focus, and it is unsurprising that this will continue.

According to Chambers the vendor is starting to see growing acceptance of this approach to the data centre among its key customers.

I think this may perhaps be a reflection of the fact that it is pushing its 'end-to-end' vision while its rivals - though they have an equally valid view - appear to waste time kicking the tyres.

The market trends towards collaboration, virtualisation and video networking "which will drive productivity and growth as the network loads for the next decade," said Chambers, are continuing to ramp up, even faster than the notoriously enthusiastic CEO had expected.

So expect Cisco to continue follow these trends closely. This is a vendor that wants to own the network, rather than just plug it in, and it is taking big steps towards this goal.

Back in San Francisco at its recent partner summit Cisco finally came clean over supply chain and lead time issues that have plagued the channel, and said it would be putting measures in place to restore things to normal.

Speaking to analysts on the conference call, CFO Frank Calderoni said that as a result of its actions, coupled with the growing pace of economic recovery the vendor would "continue to see lead times improve as we go through Q4" and should see a recovery to normal levels during fiscal 2011.

At the same time, hints emerged of an anticipated return to more normal, seasonal patterns of customer spending, which will be welcome relief to both Cisco and its partners.

Finally, we can expect to see more acquisitions in the next 12 months. Lately, Cisco has swallowed up firms such as Tandberg and Starent to support its strategy.

Chambers remarked that these deals had seen "almost without exception", very broad acceptance among customers.

"We expect to continue to be very aggressive in both our internal innovation commitments as well as our partnership and acquisition strategies," he said.

Clearly Cisco still has plenty of cash in its war chest and plans to use it. Lately it has been all about video technology as the Tandberg and Pure Digital deals show. Could it buy something from the visual end of the market again to back this up? Possibly.

However, I'm going to return to a point I made at the end of April, and suggest that the vendor has been watching HP's acquisition of Palm with great interest.

For Cisco to step into the mobility market would be very interesting to watch, and given the importance of the remote, mobile workforce to its overall technological strategy, I still think it could be a good fit for them.

Orange and T-Mobile? It's Nothing Anywhere, yet

By Alex Scroxton on May 12, 2010 11:21 AM | No Comments
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So, Orange and T-Mobile have named their new baby Everything Everywhere, presumably after a late-night brand strategy session with the ad agency.

But putting the ins and outs and the pros and cons of the merger aside, I think they've got a lot to prove and as you might have guessed, I'm not entirely convinced I like that name.

HTC Desire.jpg
Disclosure time.... I recently left Orange for T-Mobile so that I could get the lovely HTC Desire (pictured) on a data plan that didn't make me want to cry tears of rage; I maintain that while Orange is a good deal for a business user they don't yet quite understand how consumers like to use mobile Internet.

T-Mobile, on the other hand, gets this, and this is reflected in the allowances and packages available to consumer users. 

But as I signed my money over to T-Mobile (and my life over to Google) I was a little concerned that my T-Mobile plan would be consigned to the dustbin before my contract was up, so I am at least pleased to see that Everything Everywhere plans to keep the Orange and T-Mobile brands entirely separate. In yesterday's announcement, the firm vowed to maintain distinct retail networks, marketing campaigns and price plans.

So the only thing that's really changing is the quality of the network service? It appears so. Yesterday the firm announced plans for a single "super-network" that will give better coverage for customers, with a smaller environmental impact by cutting redundant sites and masts.

This sounds like great news to me; T-Mobile's weakness has always been its somewhat patchy network coverage. I was on T-Mobile in 2002, when I lived in Brighton, and it was an atrocious experience, although I'm given to understand its urban coverage has vastly improved these days.

However, one of my colleagues on ComputerWeekly.com who lives in a rural part of Norfolk and also ordered himself a Desire on T-Mobile, only to send it back because he couldn't make it work at home, so clearly things are still patchy.

It looks like there will also be some welcome changes for the business user, and by implication the channel. Everything Everywhere said yesterday that it planned to use its new-found strength in coverage and scale to ramp up offers to the business market.

Obviously we now need to know about the size and scale of the channel they will need to accomplish this. How will they rationalise distributors and overlapping reseller channels, how will they manage the branding within this context, and what sort of programme can we expect to emerge? These are all questions that Everything Everywhere is going to need to answer to prove its case in the b-2-b marketplace.

Alcatel-Lucent latest to own up to supply chain issues

By Alex Scroxton on May 6, 2010 10:34 AM | No Comments
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After Cisco came clean over the impact of components shortages on its supply chain at last week's Partner Summit, Alcatel-Lucent has admitted it has been suffering from the same problem.

Speaking on Thursday morning as the vendor unveiled its Q1 results, CEO Ben Verwaayen said tightening components availability had hampered the struggling firm's ability to fulfil reseller orders, particularly in wireless access and optical networking.

Alcatel-Lucent builds its own high-end chipsets, Verwaayen explained, but had struggled to secure supplies of more general components where "we compete for supply with other industries like cars and consumer electronics [which] are all recovering at the same time as us".

A great deal of capacity was taken out of the components manufacturing industry during the recession, particularly in the Far East, as Cisco explained last week, and it is now widely accepted that production has taken a long time to ramp back up to pre-recessionary levels.

Verwaayen stopped short of naming any particular suppliers whose product was in short supply.

Component shortages have been a source of consternation in the channel for many months now, and Cisco and Alcatel-Lucent are by no means the only vendors affected.

However, we understand that in many cases supply is not yet meeting demand and, for the sake of the ongoing recovery, this has to be sorted out soon as the situation is no good for anyone.

More honesty and co-operation is surely needed from the vendor community, lest those at the coalface of the IT channel start to miss their targets.

HP may hit reboot button on tablet project

By Alex Scroxton on May 4, 2010 3:59 PM | No Comments
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Ballmer_CES.jpgIt didn't take long. We're already starting to hear that HP may be dropping development of the Windows-based mobile Slate device it showed off at CES earlier this year.

This comes thanks to TechCrunch, which broke ranks last week to posit the end of the Slate project after the vendor picked up Palm's webOS operating system.

TechCrunch's bloggers think that webOS will be a challenge to port to a tablet device - although they add that HP will probably have a bash at it.

Some analysts are taking the opposing view, noting that using webOS over Windows 7 could allow HP to set a cheaper price point for its device and will give independent app developers an easier ride.

However the downside is that this move could set the Slate project back a long time and will allow Apple to further cement its position in the space. Note that Apple now claims to have sold a million iPads, so there will be some catching up to do.

What this means for HP's relationship with Microsoft is unclear, but after CEO Steve Ballmer (pictured above) demonstrated a prototype version of the Slate at CES this year it surely has to smart a little. But for the sake of harmonious relationships Redmond will probably just have to suck it up; HP sells millions of Windows PCs annually, after all.

Gongs for European Cisco partners

By Alex Scroxton on May 4, 2010 3:15 PM | No Comments
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Azlan and Logicalis were among the worldwide Cisco partners recognised at the vendor's annual partner awards, which were announced in San Francisco last week.

Tech Data's enterprise division and networking VAD Azlan scooped the European Channel Partner of the Year Award - the first time a distributor has received this particular accolade.

It also picked up the Partner Elevation Award, which recognises developing knowledge of Cisco technologies within the reseller community.

"[This] confirms in the strongest possible way our strategy of placing channel enablement and activation at the core of our value proposition," said Azlan vice president of enterprise and managing director of Europe, Simon England.

UK-headquartered networking and IT integrator Logicalis, meanwhile, picked up Cisco's Data Centre and Virtualisation Partner of the Year for the second year on the trot.

UK managing director Tom Kelly said the reward reflected the dramatic evolution of the data centre environment over the past year.

"Customers now demand highly virtualised and fully integrated and optimised data centre infrastructures, and want to understand how they can reap the rewards of strategies such as cloud computing," Kelly said.

New partner programmes show networkers lust for glory

By Alex Scroxton on May 4, 2010 2:50 PM | No Comments
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One of the things I'm hoping to use this space for is to flag up some of the new vendor partner programmes in our corner of the industry.

It sometimes seems that barely a week goes by without at least one new firm pitching a new programme, and many of them have high hopes for channel success in the UK and EMEA.

I genuinely believe the networking sector is hands down the most interesting part of the multi-faceted IT industry. Desktops and printers are all well and good (and very necessary components of a business solution) but to do anything these days, you have to connect yourself to the Internet and you have to communicate once you've got there.

Over two years ago in MicroScope's 25th Anniversary Edition, industry-veteran John McHugh, then with HP ProCurve and now at Brocade said: "I defy anybody to name an revolution in IT since 1997 that has not involved or required networking. It is the substrate around which all IT innovation occurs." Words I hope we can all get behind.

So networkers are in the business of selling innovation, and last week we spoke with two relatively small vendors, BigFix and Peer 1, that are attempting to build out new channels to market in the UK.

BigFix, a specialist in network security management hailing from California, launched its programme at the end of March. It hopes to establish itself as a top tier player in the sector, and regards McAfee, Symantec and Microsoft as its major competitors.

Its technology is predicated on enabling mobile workers to look after their own security by allowing the end-point device, whether a smartphone or netbook device, to pro-actively defend itself against potential threats while out in the wild, and prevent those threats from being released onto the corporate network.

Senior product manager Jim Hansen claimed the disruptive nature of the firm's technology ought to be attractive to partners as "it allows customers to take decisions about their infrastructure that they have never been able to before."

The programme will deliver the usual perks, such as business development, channel marketing, field engineering support, alongside certification training and services education.

BigFix says it plans to target VARs, managed service providers and OEMs specialising in the SMB and midmarket space.

Peer 1 launched in the UK a year ago, having got its start in Canada at the turn of the century, and specialises in.managed hosting services through a network of 17 datacentres, 21 points-of-presence and 10 colocation facilities in North America and EMEA.

Its new programme has been imported from the North American theatre, where it was recently revamped in an attempt to make it more straightforward, CEO Fabio Banducci told MicroScope.

It includes four levels of partnership with varying features including the marketing collateral and support, lead generation, sales engineers and dedicated account managers. An online portal will be launched later in May and a training programme will launch in 2011, said Banducci.

"We are looking for partners that are viewed as trusted advisors by end-users and who have deep relationships with their customer base," he said.

"Lots of people will talk about a channel programme, but we believe you need a meaningful degree of scale to operate that. A lot of smaller providers are challenged to bring resources and expertise and we are already set up to support this," he explained.
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